The Knight is an interesting piece. It is the only piece with the ability to "jump", giving it extra charm. In order to use your knights effectively, you must learn to take full advantage of your knight's movement capabilities.

I created the following diagram to help visualize the knight's unique movement. The numbers (and gradient colors) represent the number of moves it would take from the starting point to reach the destination square.

 

  

 

Pay special attention to the "hard-to-reach" diagonal squares (up 2, right 2) that take a minimum of 4 moves to reach! The immediate diagonal (up 1, right 1) would also take 4 moves to reach if the knight was sitting in the corner of the board.

The second picture is a more artistic way to look at the knight's movement pattern. Enjoy!

 

 

I supose if you print that in hiquality and focus your eyes, you can fastlookup positions on the board

 

thanks for the art 

What wonderful diagrams... thanks for sharing. Knowing the knight's hard-to-reach squares by heart is a big help in the endgame.

Around a month or two ago, I decided to try to look at the board a bit more like my dad used to.  He always used to tell me that he looked at the lines that pieces moved on.  Well, in considering this, I realized the Knight's movement was circular, rather than linear, which is beautifully shown with the images you have here.  Now, when analyzing a position, I try to see lines and circles extending from all of the pieces and see if there are any interesting (potential) intersections.

Very nice. A technical point about Knight moves...

We tend to think of Knights as 'jumping over' other pieces. However, the Knight is mathematically a root five leaper. I.e. it travels the square root of 5 times the width of a square.

The pieces represent the centre of action of lines of force acting from the centre of the square on which they sit.

So when a Knight moves, actually the point it represents sort of slides between the adjacent pieces to its destination square.

This is originally why Knights were allowed to move this way.

Has anybody seen this puzzle?

 

It'll improve how you play with Knights!!

I'd just like to poitn out on your diagrams that the knight is in the corner, but it says to get to the first diagonal two moves, where it is four.

 

Other than that, very helpful diagrams, and a very helpful (though rather long) puzzle. 

mxdplay4: There are no instructions with your puzzle. What is white supposed to be doing? Black is apparently not trying to win, otherwise 2. Na3 f2 looks a lot better than 2. ... Kc6.

And if white is trying to draw, why not 3. Nc2 repeating the position? Is there something I am missing?

mxdplay's puzzle was to train your Knight movement. I'm not exactly sure of the plot either, but, nonetheless.

The Knight is my favourite piece at the moment, I don't think any other piece has the potential to land a suprise like the knight. 

Ratchet0072 wrote:

I'd just like to poitn out on your diagrams that the knight is in the corner, but it says to get to the first diagonal two moves, where it is four.

 

Other than that, very helpful diagrams, and a very helpful (though rather long) puzzle. 

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 In both diagrams, the knight is meant to be the "center" of movement, showing the maximum possible moves for a knight in any direction. I outlined the upper-right portion with a black line (maybe it should have been dotted) to show that this is the maximum possible moves for a knight in that direction in a standard 8x8 game board. You can "draw" the board around the knight wherever you want to, depending on where you want the knight to be. It is true that when a knight is sitting in the corner of a board, it takes him 4 moves to reach his immediate diagonal, instead of 2 (a fact that I also noted in my original post). As far as I know, that is the only square that changes numbers depending on where the knight is located. Hope this helps!

Interesting side note: In XiangQi (Chinese Chess), the horse piece that is equivalent to the knight in western Chess moves the same way, except that it can't jump over pieces. It moves 1 square horizontally or vertically, followed by 1 square diagonally away from it's starting square. But if the first square it would pass through in doing so is occupied by a piece of either color, then the horse can't move there.

 

For instance, suppose there were a horse on c4 (the XiangQi board is 9x10 and not notated algebraically this way, but I'll use this notation so the rest of you understand what I'm talking about). If the c5 square is unoccupied, then the horse can move one square "up" to c5, then diagonally away from c4 to get to b6 or d6, making the end result the same as in western Chess. But if the c5 square is occupied by a piece of either color, then the c4 horse can't go to b6 or d6. Placing a piece next to a horse to intentionally block its motion is known as crippling the horse.

 

So that's how I think of knight moves in western chess - one square straight and one square diagonal away. I do need to get better at picturing a series of knight moves and getting it some place several moves away.

 

--Fromper 

>I'd just like to poitn out on your diagrams that the knight is in the corner, but it says to get to the first diagonal two moves, where it is four. <

Heh, well spotted Ratchet.

well....the diagrams are cool. I agree, the knight is very interseting. They are like the first ones I bring out. See you in the games Dan!!!

very interesting thread!

Very nice..Its strange that at square (up 2, right 2) wants  4 moves and even more strange at immediate diagonal (up 1, right 1) would also take 4 moves..Musterious piece!But i suppose at the first diagram maths and the numbers on the diagram are highly connected.

Any info out their on WHY the knight moves this way?  The actual design principle behind it?